


You Don't Trust Him To Love You (In A Way You'd Enjoy)

by Spork_in_the_Road



Series: Tumblr Drabbles [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, First Words, Minor Character Death, Possessive Voldemort (Harry Potter), Soulmate-Identifying Marks, What Did You Expect, but Ginny is still a bad bitch, canon compliant through Half-Blood Prince, he is a magpie who likes shiny things, minor Harry/Cedric, some depressive thoughts, this is kind of sad and dark, very brief and minor mention of self harm, who laughs in Voldemort's face
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26888188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spork_in_the_Road/pseuds/Spork_in_the_Road
Summary: “Someone made just for me,” Tom mutters under his breath, enchanted by the idea. Someone who will understand him wholly and completely, who will be his entirely—“Well,” Dumbledore says, and he has a strange, cold look in his steely eyes. “Not all soulmates work out.”Soulmate AU -- first words
Relationships: Tom Riddle | Voldemort/Ginny Weasley
Series: Tumblr Drabbles [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1449100
Comments: 24
Kudos: 119





	You Don't Trust Him To Love You (In A Way You'd Enjoy)

Here’s the thing.

By the time Ginevra Weasley is born, there are six other Weasley children already. It’s hard enough to distinguish yourself when you’re poor, when your family name is synonymous with Blood Traitors in some circles and Pity in others, when everything you own is second-hand and handed-down and _usedbrokendirty_. It’s even harder knowing half her siblings will make a name for themselves before she’s even out of nappies.

Bill is the most talented. Charlie, the most fearless. Percy is the smartest. The twins are funny and inventive to a degree that’s nearly unbeatable. Even Ron is the best at chess, the best at strategy.

_What’s left for me_ , she wonders.

But when she’s old enough to understand soulmarks, old enough to read them, she realizes that magic herself has marked her as different. Nobody in her family two sets of words the way she does.

* * *

Here’s the thing.

Tom Riddle is born to nothing but the name falling from his dying mother’s lips, but even in a sea of orphans, he is extraordinary. First, because he is a pretty child. Then because is so very bright. And later—though not much later, because as noted, he is _extraordinary_ —because of his magic.

And because, unlike the other children at Wool’s, there is a string of words winding around his wrist in narrow script that read, “I wish someone would see me instead of my family.”

Soulmarks. That’s what Professor Dumbledore calls them when he visits, when he explains magic and Hogwarts and the words his soulmate will one day say to him.

“Someone made just for me,” Tom mutters under his breath, enchanted by the idea. Someone who will understand him wholly and completely, who will be his entirely—

“Well,” Dumbledore says, and he has a strange, cold look in his steely eyes. “Not all soulmates work out.”

Tom gets the impression Dumbledore might not like him very much, and that’s before the man sets his wardrobe on fire.

Still, before Dumbledore leaves, Tom asks one more question.

“Sir. Do people only have one soulmate?”

Dumbledore pauses, assesses Tom. “Almost always.”

Tom nods quietly and lets the old man leave.

(There’s a second set of words in a more elegant script above Tom’s left hip that read, “It’s always you, isn’t it?” Another sign that he’s more than the wizards around him—two soulmarks instead of the usual one—but Tom doesn’t tell anyone about them. Not yet.)

* * *

When Ginny meets Harry Potter—for only a split second just outside platform 9 ¾ —she hopes it will be him. Probably lots of people hope Harry Potter will speak their words; he’s a hero and he has the prettiest green eyes and the nicest smile. He doesn’t speak to her then, and she’s too shy to say anything, and that means there’s still a chance.

Still a chance when Harry Potter comes to visit the next summer.

But of course, then he waves and says a cheery, “Hello!”

Ginny freezes, turns and all but runs back up the stairs. Neither of her marks is a simple, “Hello.”

For the next few days, weeks, she wallows a bit in her disappointment. Harry Potter is not her soulmate.

The excitement of Hogwarts dulls the hurt of her doomed crush, though, right up until she puts on the sorting hat and it says, “Another Weasley.”

And in the Gryffindor girls’ dorms late that night, having unpacked and found a strange, blank diary that she doesn’t remember buying, Ginny writes down the thought that’s been plaguing her practically from the moment she was born.

“I wish someone would see _me_ instead of my family.”

She doesn’t expect the book to write back.

“I see you.”

She stares at the words, the pretty, delicate script, for only a moment, and then she’s running to the bathroom, wrenching her nightgown down off her shoulder because even though she’s looked every day since she learned to read, she has to be sure.

“Those are my words,” she whispers to herself, vaguely aware she’s nearly hyperventilating. She all but runs back to the book—her soulmate is _a book_?—and writes more.

“I’m Ginevra Weasley, though I go by Ginny. Who are you?”

* * *

When Tom Riddle is 16 and overconfident and proud and desperate to prove himself, he opens the Chamber of Secrets and inadvertently kills Myrtle Warren.

_Waste not, want not,_ he thinks. The girl’s death might have been a bit of an accident—he’d planned to kill someone, if not her specifically, and perhaps not _right now_ —but that won’t matter for the ritual he has planned.

When he makes his first horcrux, he feels as though he’s being split apart. The agony is blinding, burning. But eventually it fades and he hauls himself up, dusts himself off, and sneaks back into the Slytherin dormitories.

It’s only the next morning that he realizes the soulmark on his wrist is _gone_. Not burned off. Not faded to gray the way they do when your soulmate has died. It’s as if it never existed.

(The one on his hip remains unchanged.)

Ultimately, he decides, it’s of little consequence. Soulmates are a childish fancy that had appealed to him when he was an orphan nobody. Now, Lord Voldemort is on the horizon—a grander image for himself that will elevate him beyond the paltry frivolities of mortal men.

He doesn’t linger on this loss, or what it might mean for his soul.

* * *

Ginny wakes up on the floor of the Chamber of Secrets, soaked to the bone in filthy water, Harry Potter bleeding profusely beside her. The diary—Tom—is on the floor, a huge hole gaping on the front cover.

_He tried to kill me_ , Ginny realizes, a sick feeling in her stomach. Tom had possessed her for months, had made her kill chickens and set the basilisk on muggleborns, had dragged her down to the Chamber so he could suck the life out of her. _And now he’s dead._

At first, there’s nothing but the relief of surviving, tinged with bitterness and a vile, betrayed feeling in her gut. The idea of telling anyone that her soulmate was Tom—was Voldemort, as it turns out—makes her throw up. And then, of course, it occurs to her that no one has to know.

It would be better if no one knew.

She keeps that tidbit to herself, even with the anger and the grief. Everyone attributes her moods to the fact that she nearly died, but eventually they stop worrying so much. Eventually they leave her alone.

The mark on her shoulder—“I see you.”—once black, now has faded to a pale gray. So light it’s nearly invisible to anyone else.

The other mark is fine.

* * *

Ginny throws herself into her life with the energy of a person who knows what it means to die. Where she was quiet and shy before—always overwhelmed and overshadowed by her siblings—she’s now loud and bright and fearless. If Tom has taught her anything, it’s that nobody else is going to come along and make her great. That’s something she’s going to have to do for herself.

So she tries. She makes friends with Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom. She studies hard, makes sure she answers questions in class. She goes to the tri-wizard ball her third year with a nice boy named Michael Corner who is not her soulmate. She dances and she has fun and he doesn’t try to kill her, so it’s a win.

She thinks she might finally be getting the hang of things.

Of course, that’s when Voldemort resurrects himself.

Harry lands in the stadium, sobbing and clinging to Cedric Diggory’s body, and suddenly the sick feeling from the Chamber is back.

* * *

Cedric Diggory was Harry Potter’s soulmate.

Ginny learns this late at night at Grimmauld Place because dreams of the Chamber and Tom are keeping her awake and when she goes to make a cup of tea, she finds Harry at the table, staring blankly in the dark.

The clock reads 2 a.m.

“I barely got to know him, and he’s gone,” Harry says, voice ragged from crying. “And it’s my fault—”

“It’s Tom’s fault,” Ginny snaps. Not her Tom, really, but they’re the same enough. Both murderers and jackasses as far as she’s concerned.

Harry looks up at her, wide green eyes, and she realizes that no one else has told him he’s not to blame. Not for Voldemort coming back, or for Cedric dying. She wonders if anyone else even knows that they were soulmates.

Maybe that’s what prompts her to tell him.

“Tom was mine.” The words taste like ash, scrape up her throat and leave her feeling raw. “The diary. He was my soulmate.”

She shows him the grayed-out words on her shoulder.

“Fuck,” Harry chokes out eventually. “That’s…”

There really aren’t words for this.

“It’s all fucked,” she agrees.

Her tea is scalding and soothing and not nearly enough. But she’s been here for months; she knows where Sirius has been hiding the good stuff from her mom. She reaches into the false bottom of the china cabinet, pulls out a bottle of Ogdens, and pours a shot into her tea.

Harry raises a brow, but she just shrugs.

“I think we’ve earned it, don’t you?”

He takes the shot she pours for him, and there’s a silent promise that they won’t talk about this. Not with anyone else.

* * *

She shouldn’t have come here.

That’s what she thinks, standing in the Department of Mysteries, in the Hall of Prophecies. One moment, they’re looking for Sirius, and then Lucius fucking Malfoy is there, and Bellatrix Lestrange, and a handful of other Death Eaters, and Ginny knows they’ve stumbled into a trap they’re not getting out of unscathed.

Harry was holding the prophecy, but sometime between him taunting Malfoy and when they all send out a simultaneous stupefy, she feels him slide it into her pocket. It takes less than a second for her to understand. They’ll think Harry has it, and even when it inevitably comes out that he doesn’t, Ron and Hermione will be the next obvious choices. Ginny is unexpected; Ginny can keep it safe.

They scatter, each one of them running in a different direction. Ginny’s dodging spells left and right, tossing hexes over her shoulder. She’s always had a fair amount of power, but the DA has honed her skills in a way they never were before. She lands more hits than she expects, hears the belligerent cursing of the man behind her when a well-placed diffindo makes him stumble. She can’t look back and see the damage herself—that would be stupid and she can’t afford to give up her meager lead—but she tosses a _reducto_ and listens as the walls collapse.

She has three seconds to be proud of herself before it all goes to shit.

Somehow they all end up back in the same room—a strange one with a pale, shimmering archway standing in the middle—and then they’re surrounded: Death Eaters on all sides.

Voldemort himself strides forward from the darkness. He’s tall and pale and snake-like, but those movements, that grace, are all Tom.

The room is too cool and dark and for a moment, she’s back in the Chamber, she’s fading, she’s dying, she’s staring up at Tom’s face, twisted into a mocking, cruel smile that she’ll never forget as long as she lives.

“Harry Potter,” Voldemort says, breaking her out of her memory. “And I see you’ve brought your useless friends.”

There’s a split second of nothing, and then Harry’s clutching at his scar, screaming. Ginny is distantly aware of Ron helping to catch him, but she won’t be distracted now. She keeps her wand level, steady, and aimed at Voldemort.

That’s why she sees when his gaze shifts to her: red and piercing and horrid.

“Don’t be stupid, girl. Give it here,” he says, words half-hissed, and he holds out his hand for the prophecy.

She stares at him. Stares, and then laughs. It’s something manic and bitter and _this is not the time_ , but she can’t help it. _Fuck_.

Because those are her _other_ words, the ones etched across her ribcage.

(When she was younger—before the Chamber incident—she’d never liked these words as well as the other set. Her soulmate was calling her stupid, for one thing, and seemed demanding to boot. After Tom and the basilisk and nearly dying, she’d looked at these words with the last shred of hope she had left. She’d hoped, first impressions aside, that maybe this person would be the one to love her. Maybe this person she’d be allowed to keep.)

What a fucking joke.

“It’s always you, isn’t it?” she spits and has the joy of watching Lord Voldemort freeze on the spot.

She has managed to strike him speechless. It’s almost enough of an advantage.

But in the end—Ginny is starting to think some things are inevitable—Voldemort and his Death Eaters rally, the Order of the Phoenix shows up to save the day, the prophecy shatters, Sirius dies.

* * *

Back in the safety of Hogwarts, of the Hospital Wing, Ginny puts her fist through a mirror.

Then she takes one of the shards to the words on her ribcage, tries to scrape them off.

Madam Pomfrey has to stop her, has to restrain her to the bed while she heals the bleeding wound.

The mark stays. It’s magic, her soulmark; it goes deeper than the skin.

* * *

Voldemort sits in his study in Malfoy Manor.

The prophecy is destroyed. Harry Potter has escaped. The Minister, idiot that he is, won’t be able to deny Voldemort’s presence now that he’s seen him firsthand.

It has been a shite evening, in short.

Then there is the matter of his soulmate. Ginevra Weasley.

_“It’s always you, isn’t it?”_

Even his new body, freshly formed out of the cauldron, had borne those words. The ones that, no matter how many horcruxes he’d made, had stayed firmly printed above his hip. Years ago, he’d thought they would disappear when he made the ring, then the cup, the locket. He’d wondered why he lost those first words but not the second set.

Now, of course, it all makes sense.

Well. He’s still not quite sure why magic has deemed some scrawny, red-haired chit deserving of Lord Voldemort.

Draco Malfoy is a well of information. Largely useless information, granted, but information all the same.

She’s a quidditch player, apparently, and—according to Draco—nearly as good a seeker as Potter. She’s got a mean bat-bogey hex and a short temper, but on the whole, she’s a year below Malfoy, so he doesn’t know much.

“Oh, but—” and here the boy pauses, pales, and swallows nervously “—she was…uh…the one who nearly died. In…in the Chamber of Secrets.”

Draco looks like he’s worried Voldemort will curse him for that, but really he’d gotten all—okay, most—of his frustration over that spectacular disaster over with when he’d first heard Lucius had given away his fucking diary.

But he didn’t know Ginevra was the one his horcrux had almost killed.

_My horcrux that took my first soulmark_ , he thinks, and something in the back of his brain clicks.

_“It’s always you, isn’t it?”_ she had said. _Always_. Because they’d met before.

She was _both_ his marks.

* * *

“I had—have—a second mark,” she tells Harry, because he obviously knows something is up. They’re sitting together up at the astronomy tower. It’s one of those nights where the dreams creep in and she wishes she had the memory of Gryffindor’s sword in her hands. She wishes she’d been the one to kill Tom all those years ago. Wishes she could kill Voldemort now.

But that, apparently, is Harry’s job.

Despite the fact that she’s pretty sure he’s already guessed the truth, and despite the fact that she knows he won’t judge her for it—he didn’t judge her for Tom, he won’t judge her now—she can’t stand to say it aloud.

She shows him the words on her side instead.

_Don’t be stupid, girl. Give it here_.

“I…I tried to get rid of them,” she whispers into the night when the silence stretches too long. “Why is it _him_?”

Harry wraps her in a hug that’s just shy of smothering.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m sorry, Ginny. I’m so fucking sorry.”

* * *

Dumbledore is dead. It’s only a matter of time before the ministry falls. Lord Voldemort is more powerful now than he’s ever been.

He can’t stop looking at his soulmark.

_It is ridiculous_ , he tries to tell himself. Lord Voldemort has no use for a soulmate, no want for one either. And certainly not one that’s a mudblood-loving bint fighting for the enemy.

He _should_ kill her and be done with it. It’s not as though he can just leave her be.

But.

But for all that Voldemort has remade himself into something near-godly, there is still an orphan boy somewhere inside of him that used to steal the things he coveted, that used to collect what little treasures could be found in Wool’s and keep them close.

Once, he saw his soulmarks and thought, _There is someone made to be mine_.

And that?

That’s a temptation he cannot quite pass up.

**Author's Note:**

> *existential screeching*
> 
> Hello. I am currently juggling what feels like a dozen different projects, but Soulmate AUs were calling me, so here we are. I have several other fun things in the works that will hopefully be posted/updated soon, but in the meantime, please enjoy my continued chaos. 
> 
> Comments and Kudos always appreciated <3


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